We have done the Boot Camp or pressed Escape after the loading video and left it. Some things are done well for players like explaining the importance of flanking with UI queues and arrows dropped on the map. Then there are some things not covered very well like concealment, how to angle your armor, and some of the roles each tank is most likely to fill. Those are some of the things I noticed, but I might be missing some details that many of you could fill in.

Take yourself back to when you first started to play World of Tanks. What did you wish the tutorial explained a little better? If you haven't played in a while you can always access boot camp by pressing escape and entering boot camp again.

Thank you very much for any feedback provided, and I look forward to reading the responses.

I would very much like the tutorial to be unskippable (to a point). Maybe make it very in depth, covering everything from basic movement, to advanced battle tactics. Its been done before, so why not again?

Make bootcamp the first battle with step by step instructions how to equip a tank, how to use consumables, how to train your crew, how to maneuver, how to cap, how to grind exp and credits, etc. At the end of the battle being completed successfully give the player enough exp and credits to grind a tank line of their choice to tier five. Having players flounder around in tiers 1-4 being preyed on by stat padders is detrimental to the game in the long run. Make it fun for new players and maybe you'll keep them playing. Or keep it torturous and lose them.

We have done the Boot Camp or pressed Escape after the loading video and left it. Some things are done well for players like explaining the importance of flanking with UI queues and arrows dropped on the map. Then there are some things not covered very well like concealment, how to angle your armor, and some of the roles each tank is most likely to fill. Those are some of the things I noticed, but I might be missing some details that many of you could fill in.

Take yourself back to when you first started to play World of Tanks. What did you wish the tutorial explained a little better? If you haven't played in a while you can always access boot camp by pressing escape and entering boot camp again.

Thank you very much for any feedback provided, and I look forward to reading the responses.

The whole game. Not trying to be funny but, when i started, there was almost nothing to go by but what other players told me. There needs to be a thoroughly thought out training period before each player is allowed into a real battle at the beginning, somewhere around Tier IV, and once again when they are about to break into Tier VIII. This would help quite a bit.

Spotting mechanics and the basics of armor angling are very important, but I think live-fire practice would be very useful. Things such as learning how to fall back after shooting, trying to hide your tank behind cover when caught in the open, etc.

It amazes me how many new players just sit still when they're getting shot at, and don't try to get out of the enemy's firing lane, or just completely ignore nearby cover. Also, the importance of going at an enemy from more than one angle (flanking).

I've been playing on a new account recently, similar to what QB has been doing, and while the new player's missions are referral program are good, there's still a huge lack in trying to explain game mechanics. The tutorial may be better than what we had before, but it still feels extremely basic and barebones. I really would rather see the tutorial be expanded to not only teach you more game mechanics (And rewarding the players for learning those mechanics), but also to follow the player through their WoT experience - Such as when they go to unlock a new class of tank, having a tutorial to play that teaches them the basics of that tank class.

Spotting mechanics and the basics of armor angling are very important, but I think live-fire practice would be very useful. Things such as learning how to fall back after shooting, trying to hide your tank behind cover when caught in the open, etc.

It amazes me how many new players just sit still when they're getting shot at, and don't try to get out of the enemy's firing lane, or just completely ignore nearby cover. Also, the importance of going at an enemy from more than one angle (flanking).

I've been playing on a new account recently, similar to what QB has been doing, and while the new player's missions are referral program are good, there's still a huge lack in trying to explain game mechanics. The tutorial may be better than what we had before, but it still feels extremely basic and barebones. I really would rather see the tutorial be expanded to not only teach you more game mechanics (And rewarding the players for learning those mechanics), but also to follow the player through their WoT experience - Such as when they go to unlock a new class of tank, having a tutorial to play that teaches them the basics of that tank class.

This ^^^

Exposure Exposure Exposure

1.Avoiding unnecessary exposure of your tank to enemy fire.

2.how to combat effectively while minimizing exposure

My first tier 4 was the matilda and my very first game (top tier) i was able to take quite a beating before being knocked out, at that point i was thinking that now that i have a proper armored med i can finally play a real role in the battle instead of just being instaboomed as soon as i tried to engage (read: Rushed out in front of enemy tanks).

Only much later did i realize Matilda is OP tank that can often be wildly successful as top tier even by complete noobs.

Maybe if people understood exposure better when they started out they would never develop into the camping noobs (typical hogh tier TD player ) so often seen at higher tier that sit back all game clueless not daring to move in because they learnt the hard way that means death while never mastering any situational subtleties that would tell them when and where they could advance.

Make bootcamp the first battle with step by step instructions how to equip a tank, how to use consumables, how to train your crew, how to maneuver, how to cap, how to grind exp and credits, etc. At the end of the battle being completed successfully give the player enough exp and credits to grind a tank line of their choice to tier five. Having players flounder around in tiers 1-4 being preyed on by stat padders is detrimental to the game in the long run. Make it fun for new players and maybe you'll keep them playing. Or keep it torturous and lose them.

If you start a new account Boot Camp is the first thing you have to do. It does go through how to use consumables, (by driving into the enemy that's fully camo'ed and being damaged.) how to train your crew is in there, and it recommends 6th sense, it shows you how to research, how to cap and defend a point, then allows them for a tier 6 tank of their choice.

We have done the Boot Camp or pressed Escape after the loading video and left it. Some things are done well for players like explaining the importance of flanking with UI queues and arrows dropped on the map. Then there are some things not covered very well like concealment, how to angle your armor, and some of the roles each tank is most likely to fill. Those are some of the things I noticed, but I might be missing some details that many of you could fill in.

Take yourself back to when you first started to play World of Tanks. What did you wish the tutorial explained a little better? If you haven't played in a while you can always access boot camp by pressing escape and entering boot camp again.

Thank you very much for any feedback provided, and I look forward to reading the responses.

"Importance of flanking", which WG has all but eliminated with all the corridor maps"

TL;DR: New player tutorial is a solid base, but a few more things can be added to help lessen new player frustration and help keep new players around.

WARNING: MANY IMAGES CONTAINED IN THIS POST

Player retention. It's one of the things that this game has struggled with quite a lot. In the beginning, I don't recall there even being a tutorial of any sort. Mind you, this is back in early 2011, and my first foray into this game is a fair bit foggy. I do know that a tutorial eventually showed up. This tutorial didn't really do much to "teach" anything. WASD moves your tank around. Mouse aims the turret. Right click to auto aim and left click to shoot. Oh, also, the front armor is strong, so shoot the sides and rears of targets! There ya go, you're good to go out and kick some butt!

Beyond that, there was zero explaining of the mechanics or any nuances of the games. This lead to a lot of players getting frustrated with being killed while having literally no idea how they died. Crew skills, map awareness, mini map features, types of ammo, how armor works, and so on, none of this was explained. There's always been a wiki, which hasn't been absolute in terms of accuracy, but it wasn't linked to in game and sources to learn the game generally had to be found on your own.

So, the new tutorial, what is it?

I made a new account, and used a new-player code "WOTREDDIT" (which needs used while the account is being made) which netted 500 gold, a Churchill with a 50% crew, and 7 days of premium.

After the tutorial is completed, the account is also given 500 gold and 3 days of premium. This starts an account off with a potential 1,000 gold and 10 days of premium. NotBad.Gif

When you fire up a new account in tanks, you're first greeted with this:

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Your first experience now is a training battle and lets you get a feel for mow the tank moves around, shoots, and has allied and enemies blatantly labeled.

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To start off, it throws a variety of enemies at you at different speeds and movements. Some drive straight line, some swerve, stop, go, and reverse, and others peek around a hangar and pull back. You get two little meatbag teammates that are AI, but generally it's no challenge to anyone who's played and unexciting. As a first impression, I'd say it's not that bad and gives a feel for things.

Spoiler

Upon completion, you get rewarded with a tier 2 vehicle and a 100% crew for it. Default, at least for NA, is the T2 Medium. You can choose a few other tier 2s, I forgot to write down which ones.

Spoiler

Next match for newbies will be here, on Abbey. This one throws some targets at you from different locations and has a few waypoints for you to go to . Like the previous, enemies have varying movements and speeds.

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Many dead things, though the bot allied AI seems to be worse than the enemy AI.

Spoiler

This was one of the neater aspects of the tutorial. It highlighted the gun arc for this fixed gun TD and your short term mission, via voice over, was to flank it.

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When the second match is over, it provides enough credits and experience to research the engine of whatever tier 2 tank you've picked.

Then it's on to more bot matches, next up:

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b

"Spot enemy vehicles" easy enough

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The first wave here is 3 vehicles, they crest and keep moving. Nothing to challenging. A glowing marker urges you to keep going to the crest.

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These two bots have pretty decent aim and the game, via voice, tells you it's for the best to fall back.

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Another glowey arrow indicates where you should be going, the areas not highlighted on the minimap are not accessible, sadly.

Spoiler

Huh, I don't remember there being this many bushes in this area of the map. Well, if you say so, Mr Glowing Arrow Thing.

With the victory, you end up with 31,000 credits and 1,140 experience. Coincidentally, it's exactly what's needed to get a a tier 3 that follows your free tier 2.

Spoiler

It also gives you a free gold crew and a commander with 6th sense. You also get a piece of equipment to plop onto your freshly minted tank.

Spoiler

The last battle you go into is "against other players" which it isn't. The bots are just named "Ryan Fellows" "John Lupe" and so on. Obviously not gamer tags. This sessions is also only hosted for you. Out of curiosity, I drove to my death, and the match ended when I died, despite 1 enemy being alive and 8 or 9 allies being left alive.

Spoiler

Once you finish this match, you're thrown into the garage and "ready" to go.

So that is the "new" new player tutorial experience. It's a whole lot better than what we had before. You learn on the fly that you'll need to lead targets, the pen indication marker to help with aiming and learning general weak spots, and a very brief lesson on cover and flanking.

Compared to the previous tutorial, this is a huge improvement.

Benefits and drawbacks:

BENEFITS:

Teaches leading targets

Teaches basic UI features. Minimap and HP/Module components.

Teaches basics of consumables

Teaches basics of equipment

Teaches basics of crew skills

DRAWBCKS:

Only introduces players to large equipment

Encourages usage of equipment that shouldn't be a primary consideration outside of a few tanks

Encourages capping without explaining cap mechanics or how resets work

Does not explain armor angling

Does not explain ammunition types

Does not explain basics of tank classes

Does not explain basics of spotting/bush mechanics when shooting.

At the end of the day, this tutorial is far superior to what was previously in place. But how can it be improved?

For the Consumables: A brief, 30 second voice over, can explain the difference between large and small consumables. As it is now, it forces players to use large kits only. Most likely to encourage their use as primary consumables, but letting players know the difference and to make the choice for themselves would be a good addition.

For the Equipment: Another area where, when the tutorial prompts you to mount some equipment, a few options should be made available with an explanation of what each type of benefit each piece of equipment does. As it is now, it throws a tool box at a new player, a piece of equipment with little value outside of slow and bulky heavy vehicles. I'd prefer to see something far more combat beneficial, say a gun laying drive, rammer, or vents, as they're almost defacto equipment for players who understand the game.

For the Capping: Capping has a place in this game, no debate. A primary goal it is not, as almost every base is wide open and you've given away your position. You might put some pressure on the enemy to react, but you're not going to have much more advantage beyond that. Having an enemy bot or two head to your own cap and have you reset it and explain how resets work would be a far more beneficial avenue to go down in teaching cap. Players will understand the cap alarms and how to reset and just how often you're giving up a boat load of advantages when capping.

NOTE: This is not me saying capping is bad. It's a tool to use but simply going into the cap at every opportunity is going to give you more headaches than benefits.

Armor Angling: Again, a small voice over during a match or during a specific part of one of the 4 games in the tutorial saying "armor is more effective when not flat-on to the enemy, angling it makes it thicker"

Ammo Types: While the tutorial is walking you through mounting equipment and consumables, it would also be a good time to explain some basics about ammunition and when/how to use it.

Tank classes: This one will be tricky and would probably take a whole new tutorial match to demonstrate properly as there's always a vehicle or five that don't go with the idea of their tank class (FCM 50t, for example, is played very much like a medium)

Vision and spotting mechanics: While the game does explain that you'll be spotted firing from a bush, adding in a demonstration of transparency mechanics and explaining the delays to 6th sense and how long you remain lit afterwards can go a long way towards alleviating one of the biggest new player complaints: being shot unspotted or failing to understand 6th sense.

So that's my take on the new tutorial. It's far better than what was once in place, but far from covering everything what's essential and does set up new players for some future bad habits. The change in your free 100% crew is also not welcome, it used to be you could sit on that 100% crew token until you unlocked a specific tank that you wanted, then could plop them in. Now you've no choice but to use that free 100% crew (with a 6th sense commander) on whatever tier 3 tank is on the line you picked.

P.S: A finale note here, while I do appreciate some effort being spent on the new player experience now, this was something that needed to be done years ago. On NA this is a waste, our market is mature and the new players trickle in. Over at EU and RU these ideas and efforts will probably result in more new players and a much better player retention rate. I personally think they've not cared enough for new players for too long, sadly.

While the current tutorial isn't bad, it isn't that good. It gets the basics and a smidgen more.

It is eons better than the first tutorial which was basically WASD TO DRIVE RIGHT CLICK FOR AUTOAIMMISS AND LEFT CLICKY SHOOT NOW YOU ARE ALL SET HAVE FUN DYING!

You need to add more explaining fully how bushes work and the spotting mechanics work and showing people how binos work and maybe give them a pair? I don't think I got a pair for completing the tutorial, and at the very least by the end of the tutorial you should have at least one of each of the simple equipment.

There needs to be more explaining how crew training/retraining goes, the real XP values on how much is lost or needs to be trained up to 100%, and that is something that should really be changed in the game rather than just showing percentages for everything, but also include a 190K/210k type of information because the fact that the percentage scale is exponential can confuse people on how much they need to do.

After the simple basics, tutorial focus should be all about the mini map. The overwhelming majority of players have no tactical awareness. See the mini map. Understand the mini map. React when crap is happening on the mini map.

I started a new account a month ago so I could just do something different.

I liked Boot Camp a lot, but several things would be a nice addition.

Side scraping, not say to do it, but actually have them learn, If they get stuck in the same battle 3 or 4 times until they learn to block their HP in Armor. They will learn, I still don't feel like I do a very good job at this.

The concept that if you are spotted Expect ARTY to ring your bell in under 10 seconds so move.

How to tell you were spotted, how to tell you are no longer spotted.

How a Platoon Works, even if you just put an AI in with their platoon.

Tactics in general, why Heavy's go to this location, Logical places for ARTY to hide, how to find a good spotting point, and always always have an escape route near you, for when you are spotted.

How to look at the opposing team and figure out OK who am I most likely to fight, so what are their advantages and mine VS. them. (Not talking about Mods, but just knowing you are going to likely face Heavy's or TD's you can think about your vision range and if you have the advantage or they do, how to NOT cut across the top of a hill but to move around it so you never crest the hill and are harder to spot.

Pretty much all of the skills that a commander needs, need to be taught or at least offered if only a boot camp off shoot, learn how to ARTY, knowledge helps when people start yelling at ARTY because they didn't shoot and they use the F Key to show they are STILL loading from the last shot, If you know they have a 40 second reload, its really hard (honestly) to be mad at 20 seconds when they don't do something...

Tier II/III Heavy, and how it differs from the Medium they had been using

Tier III ARTY (Russian RU 26) I think is the easy one to learn so teach that

Tier II TD (sniping)

Tier II Scout (Active/passive scouting)

Tier VI - Review of how to deal with all 5 tanks using the Tier VI they picked, have them fight each of the tanks ( AI ) Give the ARTY a scout so you get both of them in. Or even all at once in one long wave. How a Scout can spot or TD spot you, and you never see them, so you have to flank around.

Outside of the Boot Camp, I wish their was a Target Range that you could just go and practice VS AI targets, maybe give something the first time they go or not.

LONG LONG Range Fire

Moving Targets

Stationary targets

Jeeps (what I call the Armored cars) and their speed how to lead them

Call up a specific tank for any of those, so you can learn to hit the weak points, not just go OK, auto lock and pray or Center Mass...

It would allow people to improve with practice and not burn up others Game/fun time while they work out how to deal with an O-I or KV-220-20 or that Freaking fast Jeep that has managed to spot nearly everyone for ARTY and friends, and no one can hit, so you end up spending 3 or 4 minutes with 5 or more tanks trying to hit it, and suddenly you realize everyone is dead due to the distraction...

If you start a new account Boot Camp is the first thing you have to do. It does go through how to use consumables, (by driving into the enemy that's fully camo'ed and being damaged.) how to train your crew is in there, and it recommends 6th sense, it shows you how to research, how to cap and defend a point, then allows them for a tier 6 tank of their choice.

It's not detailed enough. You need to take them by the hand, step by step through a whole battle, and move that crew step by step , from that tank up to the tier five in that line. By that time the new player will have hands on experience of how it works instead of bouncing around the lower tiers trying to figure it out.

It is far too basic and lets face it there is a lot of existing players that need to improve by going back to the basics for a time. New players are at a big disadvantage when it comes to having established crews and being able to grind those crews much less being able to learn each class because of there being a lack of skilled crews. So I am suggesting that WG make a series of guided missions where new players are given some tier 2 or 3 premiums tanks for those missions and be guided as to how to play those classes and set up tanks properly with this in mind that the regular tech tree tanks are locked until they finish the missions. New players need to be tier locked as well until they can reach certain mile stones where either the beginners missions are completed or some battle count is reached coupled to a win rate req like 47% or something like that so tier 8 isn't so flooded with 44% potatoes with newly purchased premium 8s.

One more thing allow established accounts to gain the benefits of going back and completing tutorials so that people can get the goodies.

It doesn't all have to be one continuous tutorial, it could be split into a whole library of segments or chapters. I'd suggest setting up a series of small practice scenarios each exclusively meant to teach a particular technique and to demonstrate how useful the technique really is. For instance, in the 'hull-down' lesson, put an IS-7 into a crater, have bots shoot at it, and let the player experience first-hand how well the turret armor works. Then try the same thing out in the open with the same bots focusing the lower plate to prove that it wasn't the tank on its own that accomplished this.

And that segues nicely to the most important lesson of all- making sure the players know that this is a game of positioning, and that even the best tank, in the best MM, on the best map is useless if positioned poorly. Teach the players how to tell the difference between a useful position and a useless one, and that this more than anything else is what will make or break them.

While you can't expect to teach a new player everything they need to know to be effective in this game, I agree with many of the ideas presented already to improve the boot camp.

I would like to add a few of my own ideas.

Add in to the tutorial the videos that WG has already created for the various aspects of the game. Like spotting, ammo, etc. A skippable viewer at the appropriate points in the tutorial that show those videos would be useful.

Add a set of tutorials to the existing one that briefly goes over each tank class. Use the tier III tanks to teach each class incorporating the ideas presented above like angling/side scraping for the Type 91 Heavy for example (not that it does much, but it would give a sense of how.) One for artillery that explains how to change views, general ideas of where to go, etc. TDs and how to use bush/vision mechanics. Do a "realistic battle" like that in the tutorial, for each class, that must be won to graduate. Use a different map for each to introduce maps.

Default the mini-map to the max size in all the tutorial battles, with all the options turned on so the new player sees it. A tutorial video explaining the importance of checking the map, what the various items of the map are and how to use them, should be added to the tutorial.

Before final graduation from boot camp, present a list of resources for further learning, Like forum, links to WOT training videos, maybe even throw in some to CC websites, twitch, youtube, whatever.